Along the way, the group passed through over a dozen cities.
Qin Xiao did not conceal his identity and traveled unimpeded.
Everyone knew that their Emperor of Great Qin cared deeply for the southern frontier and had come in person.
The commoners knelt to welcome him, and the soldiers' eyes filled with tears!
Qin Xiao did not linger, advancing at maximum speed to arrive at Qingshan City.
.....
Meanwhile, a flurry of carrier pigeons bearing messages arrived at Yumen Pass.
Inside the City Lord's estate.
Xiao Xuance was admiring a painting.
The woman depicted on it was as beautiful as a celestial maiden.
Her beaming smile was enough to leave anyone intoxicated and obsessed.
It was none other than the female general of the Great Zhou, the woman he loved.
He could not help but reach out, gently stroking the portrait with a look of pure infatuation.
"If I could only have you... I would have no regrets in this life..."
Xiao Xuance's expression was full of tenderness.
Just then, a guard reported from outside the door.
"General, His Majesty is leading men to the southern frontier!"
"What?"
Xiao Xuance's smile vanished, and his brows furrowed.
How much time had actually passed? How could Qin Xiao arrive so quickly?
Without wasting time to overthink it, he turned and stepped out of the room.
"Where is Qin Xiao now?"
"To answer the General, according to the news from our scouts, His Majesty has taken the traitor Ma Shan and is heading toward Qingshan City."
The guard replied.
Xiao Xuance abruptly froze, his eyes locking onto the guard with the ferocity of a wolf or tiger.
"What did you say? Qin Xiao met up with Ma Shan?"
The worst-case scenario had occurred!
A wave of irritation surged in his heart.
Originally, he had planned to wait for Qin Xiao to arrive at Yumen Pass so he could manipulate him.
He never expected Qin Xiao to run into Ma Shan; the Emperor would definitely be on his guard now!
"Damn it! That traitor! If I had known, I would have killed him regardless of the cost!"
Xiao Xuance cursed in a low, angry voice.
The guard trembled in fear and spoke up weakly.
"General, I heard that His Majesty headed to Qingshan City without bringing a single soldier. Could it be to defend Qingshan City?"
Hearing this, Xiao Xuance looked stunned for a moment before a look of immense joy washed over his face.
"Qin Xiao didn't bring a single soldier?"
"Hahaha! Heaven is helping me!"
He threw his head back and laughed uproariously.
"To dare go to Qingshan City alone without a single soldier? Qin Xiao, oh Qin Xiao, you really think too highly of yourself."
Xiao Xuance had already gifted Qingshan City to the Great Zhou.
Right now, the Great Zhou was probably attacking Qingshan City.
Even if Qin Xiao rushed over, what could he do?
He could only watch helplessly as Qingshan City was destroyed.
"Pass down my orders: assemble the army! Follow this general to Qingshan City!"
Xiao Xuance's expression was utterly thrilled.
He couldn't let Qin Xiao die at the hands of the Great Zhou army. If he could capture and control Qin Xiao, it would be equivalent to holding the Emperor hostage to command the nobles!
This time, he was going to have a good look at this so-called Qin Xiao!
And conveniently, he would be able to meet his Rou'er on the battlefield again.
"Yes, General!"
The guard took the order and retreated.
Soon, an army of two hundred thousand men was fully assembled.
Their banners blotted out the sun, and their swords and spears formed a forest.
Xiao Xuance raised his arm and shouted, and the massive army marched out of the city, heading straight for Qingshan City!
....
At this very moment.
Qingshan City.
Outside the city walls, the two hundred thousand strong Great Zhou army surrounded Qingshan City like a tidal wave, leaving no gaps for escape.
Their iron armor and spears reflected a piercing, cold light!
Looking from afar, it resembled a suffocatingly dark cloud, a shocking sight to behold!
The leading female general, clad in fiery red armor, rode forward with a heroic and dashing bearing.
"Your Great General Xiao Xuance has ordered you to open the city gates!"
With an arrogant posture, she shouted crisply, her voice echoing across the top of the city walls.
"If you want to attack, then attack! We don't believe that Great General Xiao would surrender Qingshan City to the enemy!"
The defending Great Qin soldiers gritted their teeth tightly.
Their faces were filled with grief and indignation.
Feeling the overwhelming murderous aura radiating from outside the walls, they feared that Qingshan City would be breached before long!
But even so, as soldiers of Great Qin, they would fight the Great Zhou army to the bitter end!
Wang Xuerou let out a scoff.
She waved her hand.
Beside her, two of Xiao Xuance's trusted confidants rode forward.
"Insolent! Are you blind? Look at who we are!"
"The two of us are Great General Xiao's deputy generals!"
"General Xiao has ordered you to open the gates and surrender. Are you going to defy General Xiao's orders?!"
The two men brought out Xiao Xuance's tiger tally.
"The tiger tally is here! How dare you be so insolent!"
In an instant, the defenders of Qingshan City widened their eyes, staring fixedly at the tiger tally.
Their eyes turned red, their heads spun dizzily, and their bodies trembled.
It was actually General Xiao's tiger tally!
General Xiao actually wanted them to surrender to the enemy!
What deep irony this was!
They wanted to fight to the death, yet their Great General ordered them to surrender!
True despair was not about how many enemies there were, but about their own general telling them to surrender!
For a moment, a deathly silence fell over the city walls.
"We will say it one more time: open the gates and surrender. Otherwise, when the city is breached, all of you will be slaughtered!"
The two deputy generals roared again, their voices like thunder.
The faces of the soldiers on the wall twisted in pain and despair.
"Why... why would General Xiao issue such an absurd order!"
"Does he not know... that the Great Zhou army will slaughter the city for three days once they enter?"
"There are hundreds of thousands of commoners in our Qingshan City!"
The soldiers questioned with hoarse, exhausted voices.
The two deputy generals maintained cold, indifferent expressions.
"You don't need to know that. General Xiao has his own arrangements!"
"Hurry up and open the gates! Otherwise, you will be killed without mercy!"
The soldiers' expressions showed struggle, hatred, agony, and humiliation!
They fell into a deep despair.
Before the battle even began, they were ordered to surrender.
But the price of surrender was the lives of all the citizens in the city!
What did they become soldiers for?
To protect their homes and defend their country!
However, right at this moment.
An aged yet powerful voice exploded into the heavens!
"I, Huang Hansheng, eat the salary of my lord and obey the orders of His Majesty! What kind of thing is that wet-behind-the-ears brat Xiao Xuance, to think he is worthy of making this old man surrender!"
As the loud roar faded.
Swish! Swish!
The sound of something tearing through the air suddenly rang out.
Two flashes of cold light shot out from the city wall at a speed that left no time to react!
They pierced through the throats of the two deputy generals with absolute precision!
Blood splattered into the air!
The two men clutched their throats, their eyes wide open, as their bodies went limp and tumbled off their horses.
Silence reigned atop Qingshan City. Countless people looked up in a deathly stillness, turning their gazes toward the place where the two cloud-piercing arrows had been fired.
There stood an old general with a weathered face, wearing beast-patterned armor and holding a Qilin bow in his hand.
His hair and beard were gray, his eyes were wide with anger, and his imposing aura was astonishing.
"The soldiers of Great Qin can be killed, but they cannot be humiliated!"
"An old steed in the stable still yearns to gallop a thousand miles!"
"Today, this old man will rely on his twilight years and frail body to slaughter your two hundred thousand Great Zhou iron troops!"
His appearance caused the bodies of the Great Qin soldiers to tremble!
Their suppressed anger erupted!
Their once desperate eyes reignited with a resolute light!
Their blood boiled with passion as they looked at the old general.
"We are willing to follow Old General Huang and fight to the death!"
A unified roar echoed throughout the heavens and the earth!
d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
lity and could only live as an ordinary mortal. He only wished to live a peaceful life. Yet he didn't know— The dog he adopted, because it ate his food, became a legendary demon king. The kitchen knife he casually forged became a peerless divine weapon, causing numerous experts to fight desperately for it. The young disciple he took in became an immortal lord that led an era, due to cultivating the techniques Ye Feng taught him. Even the skeletons he looked down on the most were ominous demon kings that suppressed countless worlds. Many years later, looking at the void shattered with a punch, Ye Feng murmured to himself: It turns out the peerless kings were myself all along...
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
